


The Sorrowful Haunted Man

by Devilinthebox (princegrisejoie)



Series: Reincarnation Verse [2]
Category: Death Note
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Bittersweet, Haunted Houses, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 03:11:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5231693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princegrisejoie/pseuds/Devilinthebox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Though Light never experienced it, the prospect of death, a contract he cannot escape, soils his present like a childhood memory. A nasty colour in a perfect landscape. So he accepts the police investigation in the abandoned house, and here he finds a ghost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sorrowful Haunted Man

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on [tumblr](http://capitaineblackbird.tumblr.com/post/129420125936/the-theory-of-reincarnation-23). Thanks for your support and appreciation :)

_Light loved the ghost; it was weird and did not belong in this world. It was everything they accused him to be in secret._

* * *

 

Light chose the career, honestly. It was one of these conscious, yet forced choice. But he did choose, at some point, to be a detective. The path seemed natural to him, not well-lit or pleasant, but natural.

He was taught the virtues of duty by his father’s lack of presence at home – duty calls, he’d say at dinner time and that made his wife smile softly. Little Light used to think: duty is the powerful force that pulls dad away. Duty… he had a sour and clear taste of it. The rest, all the principles of law and the conduct of an investigation, Light could learn. He was one of these students who doesn’t need passion to set his mind in motion. He let the words of his teachers seep into him, his head against the windowpane and in his eyes, a sorrow they all preferred to call nonchalance.

If life is a game, then how do you win it? By achieving new records, beating the odds. You must do better than your father before you.

That was his motivation and he avoided questioning it.

So he chose the natural path. The easy way. Detective, someone who finds the truth. It looked like a quiet path. The journalists say he is a prodigy and that is sufficient to take over white-knight-armored-in-duty Soichirô Yagami. They remain shy in their praise. Light never asks them why. He waits for the city to see it: the extreme purity of his intentions. Goodwill will carry him where he wants, he has to believe that, and be patient.

It is too perfect a plan.

“You will take my place, someday. I can see it.” The chief detective seems reasonable when he says that.

Yet, the man also believes in ghosts. He wants Light Yagami to talk to them in the haunted house on the blurry edges of town.

Someone who talks to ghosts is special. Light finds relief in that fact, and demands to inspect the abandoned house one more time, and once more. His colleagues have wide eyes when they look at him, expressions of compassion for the young man nobody gets, but the chief accepts, because Light Yagami is not like the others. He is a genius, which condemns him to the same isolation as monsters and beasts. In this quiet despair of his, who knows what kind of ideas his mind hatches?

Light accepts his fate. He learns to.

He supposes, perhaps they’re better when he is far. It is inconvenient to work a job you can live or die into every day with someone you sense has a connection to death. Fascination, someone says once, _Light…um – you have a fascination with deat_ h. Stop fearing it. Stop mentioning it. For the love of what’s sacred, you talk like someone who knows will die young.

And Light wishes death would haunt someone else. It is, after all, a tedious thing to be obsessed with. It could ruin his plans.

Ever adamant to act rationally, he actively tries to get his mind off it.

But he can’t. Life itself reminds him of death. Though he never experienced it, the prospect of death, that contract he cannot escape, soils his present like a childhood memory. A nasty colour in a perfect landscape. So he accepts the missions in the abandoned house, and here he finds a ghost.

Its presence beats at Light’s heart and brain, a rhythm inside him as the pulse he seems to lack at times. It delights him. The thought of finding a proper spirit in the empty house never crossed Light’s mind. He was never so lucky.

He loved the empty house because it wasn’t quite a shelter, it was certainly not cozy either, but it occupied his afternoons.

Yet, there is indeed a ghost living there. Ghosts have met death, resisted it. The prospect of meeting one makes his heart bounce like a child on his way to Neverland.

It happens in the room up there with the old, dusty closet. The first time Light hears the ghost, it’s joking about his propensity to avert his eyes from the truth. A clever play on words mingling his (supposed) sexuality and that majestic piece of furniture standing vigil beside the window.

“Will you hide in that closet too, Detective?” And a sneer.

Witty. Light doesn’t care for the advice of a supernatural being on the obstacles of real life. So, he folds his arms, standing tall on the threshold, and fixes a point ahead where the ghost could be.

“Why would I want to hide in a closet?” Light asks. His voice barely raises on the last note.

It’s not that he doesn’t realise he is addressing an invisible creature. Light simply doesn’t need more time to adjust to the situation. Ghosts, he reflects, have always existed in his mind.

The ghost won’t answer, so Light ventures deeper into the room.

“I am supposed to hunt you down. Chase you. This is why I come here.” Light announces this, and wonders if he’s lying or not.

He notices a mirror on the wall, an antique, with ornaments so rich they overshadow the reflection of those who stand before it. Light deplores that and looks for a glimpse, any trace of a ghost in the polished glass. Mirrors tell the truth, don’t they?

The ghost is nowhere to be seen. But the door behind Light moves on its own – it closes, as if gently pushed. Light turns very slowly to face a dead man walking.

Or rather, settled into the one comfortable armchair in the room.

“Hello.” The man waves a pale hand with fingers so slim Light has trouble seeing the flesh around them. “You’re quite the charming visitor. I’m L.”

The name (that is not a name at all) comes with a sinking feeling. Light ignores it, as he sees no reason why he should be devastated to finally have the proof death was never inexorable.

“You’re a real ghost…” Light says, and moves closer so he stands before the man. He steps on the Persian carpet with his shoes on but doesn’t feel remorse. His eyes never leave L. “You look human, but I can feel it. You’re not really here. This is against the rules: you need to leave the world, and yet…You couldn’t.”

At that, L adopts an expression of strange concern. Light feels compelled to convince him they’re alike. He’d rather stay calm and collected, but the words fly out of his mouth, sincere and nonsensical. For his anxious mind, ever frightened of not making sense, his heart is taking a leap of faith.

“I know. I have no proof you are a ghost, save for your sudden apparition, the undeniable fact that –“ A quick glance at the wall. “…the mirror doesn’t register your presence and the vague, strange…ethereal aura. This doesn’t prove death can be stopped. I should rely on evidence. That said, there are facts you can neither prove nor deny, do they lost their authority because they’re not for us to grasp? You died and you came back to meet me. I wouldn’t invent a story like that…Do you believe me? Do you know why you’re here?”  

Light is halfway to sounding mad, but it’s brilliance he aims for, always. The limit is thin: L can understand that. Whoever L truly is. He always had a place there, within Light’s flesh, like a kindred soul or a crazy idea.

Silence sets in and Light tenses. “Answer me, please.”

L, who’s maintained a mask of impassibility throughout Light’s discourse, finally cracks a smile. It fades away before Light can evaluate its sincerity.

“You’re Light, aren’t you?” L asks, and seems to be keeping something at bay – a feeling, a remark or the memory of a person he thought was gone forever.

Light’s eyes widen. “Have you spied on me?”

As a response, Light draws a shrug from L. He understands the line of questioning is a dead end and comes up with something else.

“How did you die?”

The ghost has the face of a young, if pale, man. As his vision adapts to the special light ghosts are woven in, Light notices his hair is painted black, underlining how sick he looked.

“Was it an illness?” he adds. This is by far the cruelest way to miss a fate. Light used to dream of dying young because it’s easy to disappear and terrible to be a disappointment. However, he wished for a quick death. Something easy and light.

“I…can’t say what killed me. It know it was a person, but I don’t think it is exactly what got me killed.”

“Perhaps. You choose to kill, don’t you? Murder is a voluntary act. Not everyone can end a life.”

“I don’t think you believe that, Yagami.”

“You can’t be sure. Ghosts are not telepaths.”

“You are certainly quick to believe I am really a ghost, and not a piece of your own mind.”

A faint smile blossoms on Light’s face. A ghost could be a piece of his mind; he will permit it. This is a fantasy Light’s sensitive to: a creature living within him, a timeless deity aged enough to be a god – almost an ideal, controlling his movements. It’s a wish he made once.

Sayu marveled at tales of dragons and knights. Light relished the power of spirits – ghost stories, though he found himself incapable of sleeping tight because of them.

“I couldn’t invent you,” he tells Lawliet. He doesn’t mention the desire to be possessed by a deity, to be the devoted marionette of a vigilant god. It’s beneath him. It’s beneath anyone with a tiny bit of self-respect. Some wishes are best left unfulfilled. This one would strip him off his humanity, and who would want such a thing?

L uses a soft, slow voice to answer: “I’ll take it as a compliment. You seem to have a vivid imagination. It’s flattering to be too complex for you.”

A note of venom in L’s tone puzzles Light. Childishly, he fights back.

“I could not have made you up because I’m not an artist. I dreamt of becoming an architect. To give birth to beauty. Structure. Perfect things. You certainly don’t qualify.”

“Hmph. Perfection. That sounds dull.” The ghost sulks and the room follows his pace – all darkens with his mood, a storm clouds the horizon outside. Light delights in seeing raw, inexorable power at play.

“Who made you a ghost?” he asks, dismissing L’s growing anger.

“No one.”

“You are immortal. That can’t happen under normal circumstances. You don’t see it? This is not me being crazy. All humans die, that’s the simple truth. You’re the only one. No one else is immortal,” Light says, excitement flowing through him and oozing from his words.

L doesn’t share his enthusiasm. To Light’s dismay, he even seems annoyed by it.

“Well. That’s a relief. I’m special. Specially bored, and specially alone.”

“But you’re still here. You defied death! It shouldn’t happen. How did you do?”

“It happened. That’s all. Just like you died before your heart stopped beating.”

It escalates – a déjà vu that makes Light nauseous. The discussion turns sour and dangerous as it always does with L, but how does he know that?

“Don’t give me that look, Yagami. I’m telling the truth. You, a living man, are dead. You know it,” says L in his singular voice. The sort of melody you have to get used to. You might love it someday, it will always strain your brain. “I sense it, you have left this world. You’re dead. Or… soon to be. Welcome to the realm of wandering earth eternally in search of some purpose…”

Light wishes he could protest with sincere vehemence. Instead, he is grateful to L for turning a vague sensation into precise, cutting words.

“I’m not dead, I’m…alive.” He thinks: what makes me alive? He finds some arguments. “I breathe. I can see.”

“Oh, you can see?” L snaps. “You can see!” This all seem tragic to him, so much so that his laugh sounds hollow. “Light, you were always so, so blind. Vision was the only ability I possessed that you completely lacked. You just can’t see the world around you.”

“You talk as if we know each –“

There is a sudden glow, a creak in time where no one can speak - or exist for that matter. With no apparent movement, L jerks up to his feet like a devil out of its box and the ghost’s hand finds itself halfway to Light’s throat. It stops its course and falls upon Light’s shoulder.

A feeling, intense like devotion, ripples through Light’s body. He could move away, that would be prudent, but he doesn’t want to.

He is paralysed by his own desire to know more about ghosts. About L.

He is standing there, the undead creature, with a wicked glint in his eyes like children in horror movies. Was that sudden outburst a prank, a test? Light keeps all nervousness from his posture. He tries to get a grip on himself, but his fists remain clenched and his heart thumps heavily against his chest. _Bam, bam, bam._

“You’re partially dead because you never take risks. You advance with a mind that never, ever rests and you folds your eyes at the slightest disturbance. The world is chaotic. You never accepted it. So you die slowly, with the usual patience and denial. Like a sick animal whose strategy is to spend its last days quietly waiting in some half-lit corner of the bedroom. I suppose it prevents you from panicking. Oh, but I grant you more credit than an animal, rest assured of that. You have a trump card, for the times of doubt. You will convince everyone this world is ill and needs a cure. So you pass for the dreamy idealist, not the poisonous man plagued by sorrow you smothered under piles of pretty principles. The world is unfair! You tell them. And contradict you would be cynical. No one wants to be cynic with you. You’re so helpful. So well-intentioned. But really, Light, is the world the sick one?” He pauses and Light realises words will not save him this time. Worse than that: he has no desire to try. He’d rather prosecute than defend – you’re right! Condemn me! To death! Before it gets worse and worse and I disappear and someone else finally acts in my stead.

He would trade his soul not for knowledge but for some peace of mind, just to forget how awful that universe is (it’s true: it seems a quiet journey at first, and then it hits you how humans long for starry skies or ordinary kindness because beauty and benevolence are not in their nature). L is right, he is sick. His fantasies of immortality stem from an ill-advised desire of revenge against the universe. He won’t play by its rules because they’re unfair. Otherwise, why would he want to live forever in a place so terrible?

He is sick and L is right. But what stirs in Light’s stomach is that familiar, sour sensation called injustice. He is sick, yes, but L should question the source of his disease. He should ask why. He should understand. He should be different from the rest.

This is why Light finds it in himself to be his own advocate. “You have no idea who I am,” he says, his voice lower than usual.

“Oh, I do.”

L flops down into the armchair again, lazily as if his body was made of rags. Light falls silent, a surrender of a similar vein.

L does not need to say more words. He is telling the truth with disconcerting ease. Light pales as he considers this: a ghost has more presence than him. It hits him so cruelly it silences his thoughts at once; his mind freezes and loses its usual, spectacular momentum. It’s hindered, stupefied, frozen.

Light swallows against his throat, reads contempt in L’s eyes though he might be imagining it. His hands are shaking and his legs grow so weak that he half-kneels on the refined Persian carpet. He pretends this is only so he can have a sight of L at eye level.

“Tell me, then. Who am I to you?”

“I know you and I can affirm I am the only one. How do you know anyone, really? When do you, Light, show yourself? You’re so distant. But everyone, including the father who will never understand you – everyone agrees on one thing: you mean well. Which is, to many people, the sign of your goodness. And what do good people can’t do, again, according to popular belief? They can’t kill. Can you kill, Light? Most people would say you’re a hypocrite and a fake. Some whisper that you’re mad and rumour has it you are repressing every single thing that makes you, well, unique. But they all think you are too frightened of death to wield a deadly weapon. They all think, even those who hate you, that you are appalled by crime; that even if you killed, you couldn’t survive as a murderer.”

“There is truth in that, you know. Killing to you is what gambling is for the true player – a solace. And in your bones, you know that. You know that if you kill once, you’ll never stop. I did not know all of this for certain while I lived because people like you and me, we are only yourselves when our minds are turned off. It never happens to me, or so I’d love to believe. You? Well. When you kill, your mind…it derails. That’s how I know you. I know you in the most intimate of ways. You killed me.”

Light blinks. Reality stays. The awful taste in his mouth too.

“This isn’t…possible.”

“Why not? You’re not a sweet boy. You are devoted. Helpful. Kind. But never sweet. You don’t even taste sweet, and I know that for a fact.”

“You’re- You’re bitter. And mad,” Light says, spitting the words. “There is no way you can have known me. I’d remember.”

“You say this regularly enough, and it is often true that you have no memory of what I’m talking about. Does that mean it didn’t happen?”

Light considers this for a moment. He chooses to dodge the question: “Tell me one thing you know about me. I’ll tell you if it’s true.”

“It’s a trap I won’t fall for, you little snake,” L drawls. His voice changes – it fills up the room, low and dead, and the tone doesn’t waft up and down like before. It’s inanimate as a statue you cannot touch nor see, and like a statue, it is made of cold stone.

It is clear to Light then: he has done something very, very wrong. Somewhere, in a place and time he can’t possibly remember.

“You want me to say you’re brilliant and unique and special so you can cherish the compliment. And then, that silver-tongue of yours will move to inform me I shouldn’t have answered, that the right answer was ‘But Light, you are the worst person to ask whether or not I am right about you! You don’t know what you are!’ What a twist, even I will be blown by your wit. We’d share a long silence and all my assumptions about you would tumble down and my ordered world would be shattered. You seem to forget I have lived through the Yagami experience already. Died from it.” He lifts his hands up theatrically, so as to swallow another flash of anger. “So that’s my answer. Unabridged version. You want the short one? You are not competent to judge what I think of you. And in every universe you have that same arsenal of clever little plans I could fall in love with if they hadn’t killed me once.”

Light lifts his eyes to meet L’s, a piercing gaze that pins him.

“I apologise,” he says and tries to reach for L’s hand.

Some tales are true; the ones that leave no room for hope and romance, usually. His hand does pass through L’s and it feels cold, freezing cold.

He observes L, since he can’t possibly touch him. He observes L, who is delving into his thoughts, biting his lip and running a hand through his beautiful unkempt hair at times. There is not one part of Light that still believes he might be dreaming – could his imagination create a creature so akin to him? The mind has its own limitations, after all, as some stories will never be written by the human hand. Conversely, reality is not entirely accessible to the human perception. There are more blind spots than we’d like to admit and for that reason, it is a realm of unsuspected possibilities. L exists but doesn’t live. He is one of these unknown forces coursing through the fabric of the universe. Maybe there are more of them. Maybe, who knows?

The wind wafts through the ancient windows, when earlier it crushed and roared against them. L’s voice raises once more, scarcely above a whisper.

“You used to be convinced there was an order in this world. An order we humans should strive to respect and imitate. Do you still believe that, now that you know monsters exist?”

“You’re not a monster.”

“Monsters don’t belong here. That’s what a monster is. Something that has no place anywhere in the world. By that definition, I am a monster,” L says calmly. Patience fits him as well as anger.

“I am…not sure about order. What I know is that my life is empty, so I can welcome a monster or two.” Light pauses and moves his eyes up to meet L’s soft smile. “Maybe just one. It’s enough.”

“That’s…that’s unexpected,” L simply says.

“I’m sorry for what I have done.”

“That wasn’t you. Not really.”

“You don’t believe that,” Light states. “It was me, it could only have been me.”

“Why?”

A beat. “You know why.”

L stares at him, impassible, and Light stares back until spots dance before his eyes. He blinks and, as he expected, he is alone in a deserted room in an empty house, which is really nothing exceptional for someone so lonely. It’s like being a guest in his own mind.

He is used to loneliness. Abandonment, though, is a dull pain he never knew. That pain should not exist, right? Light should not feel it, right?

L has been gone for a long time and by Light’s own fault and death is not allowed to hurt you if you’re the one giving it.

That’s right.

*

Light thought he could forget, stuff the memory of L in some imaginary box he has in his head – for the things that disturb.

It doesn’t fit in the box. Of course. It doesn’t fit anywhere, not in this sad world and perhaps not anywhere save for Light’s mind. There’s only chaos in here, strange wishes lined up like flowers on a shelf. Light is fond of pretending his mind has its own order, that chaos doesn’t exist – it’s only order for those too dull to understand its logic.

So he keeps L in his mind, and there comes a point where he needs the confirmation he is inventing the words they exchange every day. He wants to be able to say to himself: I’m mad. The ghost made me derail from my quiet path. I am two beings in one body now and it’s all his fault.

He doesn’t address L aloud in the calm of his apartment because it feels too cliché. Light does it in daylight with little concern for those who may hear him. It’s weird, to be so insolent.

“I’m calling you here at my workplace, L. I would never have done that before,” he says in an accusatory tone. “It’s not me indulging in self-pity, though. This is a gift. I can talk to someone. You know how hard it is for me. I feel like I’m dreaming all the time. Your presence feels substantial…real. I suppose you find the irony delightful. You’re dead and yet -”

The door is pushed open. By a living person this time, Light notices in mind, disappointed.

“Yagami? I heard you talking. Everything okay…?”

Light favours the chief with a polite smile.

“It’s perfect. Oh, and that house you asked me to visit? There’s nobody in it.”

As he utters the words there comes flooding over him a presence without a body. The ghost followed him. He is there.

The chief doesn’t see the spark in Light’s eyes. “I thought so. We just wanted to be sure. Kids who explored the house a few days back said they heard – uh, bells or something. They said they saw someone in the room upstairs. Well. I suppose they just have a vivid imagination. I’ll tell their parents.”

“You shouldn’t tell them. I know it’s your job and you will do it either way, but…They weren’t completely wrong. They will think they’re crazy.”

The chief raises an eyebrow, puzzled. He might be thinking of Soichirô Yagami, and how he never could grasp his son. “They’re kids. They’ll think I’m the one who doesn’t understand.”

“Yes. You’re right. I apologise –“

“Don’t mention it,” says the chief detective, and as he is about to leave the room: “Ah, and Yagami…I talk to myself too sometimes. Don’t worry. It’s a lonely job we do.”

He doesn’t wait for Light’s reaction.

It’s a shame they rely on vision and think he is talking to himself. At last, Light muses, he remains the only genius they’ll ever see. The lonely, mercurial, not right in the head genius. That’s his niche. It was L’s too.

Perhaps immortality is what they gain for having missed each other; they should have met and the universe owes them that much.

* * *

 

**Notes from Lawrence “L” Lawliet on the Reincarnation Theory – Part 2.**

_I know that… Light - the Light from that story, started collecting ancient books of alchemy and witchcraft and necromancy in hopes of abolishing the barriers between life and death. He never succeeded. L had died once, and Light had to live. What do you make of that ending? I think it’s better than nothing. Most people don’t realise how lucky they are to be still breathing. Light became too aware of his liveliness; he, who was so afraid of old age, counted the days, minutes and seconds before his death -_

_“L told me. January 28 th 2010! I have met my death, I have met my purpose and horizon. I would not fall for a woman or a man. That wasn’t an illness. I was meant to love someone old and powerful. I know that now.” _

_He wrote in that black diary every week. That black diary that you possessed once._

_So, that was the second time we met. That time, you could call it karma. They’re dead men walking and greet each other like destiny owes them that rendezvous._


End file.
